Google Drive Adds New Features in iOS Update, Has Starting Problems

Google Drive is motoring along nicely with a new 1.30 update out for the productivity app, allowing users to better access and edit their documents in Google's updated cloud storage service, but some users are stuck at the Sign In button.

Across the App Landscape

Google is doing a decent job of putting across its own vision of the mobile world on all devices, not just Android. The Google Apps folder on my trusty iPhone has half a dozen apps I use pretty much all the time, while my Apple folder has eight apps caked in dust, with only iTunes worth any space on the front page.

The lead features in this Drive update for iPhone and iPad are the rather useful addition of landscape editing of documents, giving a slightly more desktop-feel to it, and a boost in speed and performance. At the moment there seems to be an issue that the Sign In button isn't working (for me and several posters on the App Store and Twitter), so its hard to gauge the improvements right now.

But, when that quirk is ironed out, it should be the green light for another move in the direction to increasing collaboration, remote and mobile working. Google Drive launched is almost one-year old now, having consumed Google Docs and offering its services for free if you've got 5GB or less of documents you're working on.

Heavyweight Users Pay Here

While Microsoft refuses to let users upgrade their SkyDrive storage via Apple's in-app payments method (giving Apple a cut of the proceeds), Google will let users upgrade in-app with 25GB of extra space costing $25. And with 10GB file limits, million character document counts, only the rather weedy 256 column limit of spreadsheets really limits the service.

Even if you don't actively use Google Drive for working on documents, if you use other Google services then it can always provide a useful 5GB repository for useful documents and files you might need to access on the go.

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